"Because I was a brute. I've told you that. And because it made me unhappier and unhappier to see you drifting away from me, and then, every time I could have done anything to draw you a little closer I'd lash out and send you farther away with my selfishness and jealousy. I didn't know it was any surprise to you. It's been the one thing you've known from the beginning----" She shook her head. "Every time you lost your temper you said you'd stopped loving me. And that nobody could love the bad girl I was, to flirt and deceive you----" "I've no excuse. I haven't even the nerve to ask you to try it a little longer. But believe this, Marjorie; the very hardest thing you could ask me to do----" She laughed a little, starry-eyed, "If I asked you to go and do the cooking and cleaning for your beloved men, that you made me do?" she asked whimsically. He nodded matter-of-coursely. "It would mean Pennington doing my directing, and I don't think he's up to it; he's a fine second in command, but he can't plan. Yes, I'd do it in a minute, though it would probably mean the job I'm making my reputation on going smash. Do you want me to? If the whole thing went to the devil it would be a small price to pay for getting even another half-chance to make good with you. May I, Marjorie? Say I may!" He was bending forward, alert and passionate, as if it were a chance to own the world that he was begging for. She told him so. "It is--my world. I mean it, Marjorie. I don't deserve it, and I don't see how you can trust me, but let me do that. Or anything. I don't care how hard or how ridiculous, if it would mean that some day I could come back to you and you'd consider--just consider--being my wife." "But, Francis! But, Francis, I don't want you to be ridiculous! I don't want you to fall down on your work. I don't want you to do anything----" "I know you don't. That's the worst of it. And it's coming to me." She was silent for a little while. "It hadn't occurred to you, then, that perhaps--perhaps living in the house with you might have made me--well, a little fonder of you?" She did not know what she had expected him to do when she said that. Anything but what he did do--sit perfectly still and unbelieving, and look as if she had stabbed him. "No," he said finally. "That couldn't happen. Don't talk to me that way, Marjorie. It's cruel. Not that you haven't the right to be cruel." It was Marjorie's time of triumph, that she had planned for so long, in those days when the work was hard and things were lonely sometimes. But she did not take it. She only put out one shy hand, for it was a little hard for her to go on talking, she was getting so tired, and said timidly: